Sukkoh City

An organization of young Jewish professionals called Reboot, which includes our daughter, Kay, put together a contest to design a modern Sukkoh - the outdoor structure that is part of the holiday of Sukkohs, and a reminder of a time when Jews were wandering around the desert for 40 years and sleeping in temporary structures. 600 entries were received from around the globe, and a group of architects and critics picked twelve to be built and exhibited for two days in New York's wonderfully busy and vibrant Union Square Park. Readers of New York Magazine voted for their favorite and we were present as Mayor Bloomberg announced the winner - a bubbly contraption that was our least favorite. A number of the sukkohs were sold and the money passed along to Housing Works for their homeless projects.

The event was New York at its best - creative people presenting their cutting-edge work to a crowd of skeptics, fans, skate boarders, street artists, chess players, local politicians and a great variety of others. Everyone was taking pictures, talking with the architects, who had come from places as far away as Berlin and Idaho, and, generally putting in their two cents. People were meeting old friends, the Mayor's hulking security team was keeping their eyes on the crowd, and we even bumped into our Rabbi - on his way to a guitar lesson.
Here are some pix:

This log weighed a ton and was supported by glass panels

A sukkoh built from simple wooden shims

Based on a pineapple?

Our fave - every grommet hand carved with a Jewish star

The crowd was a typical NYC smorgasbord, especially when it came to head coverings

                                        

A Walker in the City Re-visited

One of my favorite books about NYC (and the inspiration for the title of this blog) is A Walker in the City by Alfred Kazin. Kazin was one of the 20th century's great critics of American literature and he continued to write essays and memoirs until his death in 1998. This memoir of his childhood and adolescence in Brooklyn's Brownsville was first published as a series of New Yorker pieces and then put out as a collection in 1951.
Here's what I love about this book: Kazin has a way of putting you in a place - through the images, sounds, even the smells - that is so vivid and sensual. He is an excellent listener and captures his characters' eccentricities. For example, he describes how Communists and Socialists pronounce the word "Negro" differently - with the Communists showing a pride of ownership of the term, because they have made the Negro part of their cause. That is a very subtle distinction.
Kazin loves his parents very much - his often unemployed house painter father and his dressmaking mother are very sympathetically presented. Despite their struggle for money (much of the book takes place during the Great Depression) they are able to put out a very good Sabbath dinner. It is rare for an author to admit he actually cares for his parents. He also loves Brownsville, although he is learning how much more there is to the world than his familiar tenements and pushcarts.
The most lyrical part of the book comes at the end - when Kazin walks across his neighborhood to visit a nearby library. Finally, he escorts a girl to a park that overlooks distant Manhattan. You know that that is where his future lies, but you sense his ambivalence at leaving the Brownsville he has chronicled so completely and beautifully.